The day after a new anti-government demonstration bringing together tens of thousands of protesters, the Minister of the Interior and Health and number two in the government Arié Dery was dismissed from his post on Sunday, January 22, by the Prime Minister , Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday invalidated the appointment of Arié Dery, convicted of tax evasion. 

"It is with a heavy heart and a lot of pain (...) that we are forced to relieve you of your post in government," Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem attended by Arie Dery. 

He added that the judgment "ignores the will of the people" and that he will endeavor to find any legal means so that Arie Dery can "contribute to the service of the State of Israel". 

“The Prime Minister must sack him” 

Leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shass party, Arie Dery was named health and interior minister under a complex coalition deal struck in December following Israel's November 1 legislative elections. 

The Supreme Court, the country's highest legal body, announced in a press release on Wednesday that it had decided by a majority of 10 judges out of eleven "that the appointment of deputy Arié Dery to the post of Minister of the Interior and Health cannot be validated". 

"The Prime Minister must dismiss him", she added, recalling that Arié Dery had announced, at the beginning of 2022, that he was retiring from political life after his conviction for tax evasion.

This withdrawal was even a condition set by the courts to avoid prison. 

But Arié Dery was elected to the legislative elections in November, then appointed to the government set up at the end of December by Benjamin Netanyahu, with his ultra-Orthodox and far-right allies. 

>> Read also: The far-right government in Israel, "a test for democracy"

At the end of December, the deputies hastily voted a text, baptized "Dery law" by the press, authorizing a person convicted of a crime, but not sentenced to prison, to obtain a ministerial portfolio. 

The objective of this text was to allow Arié Dery to sit within the executive. 

In their reasoning, the judges of the Supreme Court criticized the "Dery law", without invalidating it, and considered that the appointment of Arie Dery to the government was "in serious contradiction with the fundamental principles of the State by right". 

The ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party Shas is the second party in the government coalition.

Tutelary figure of Shass, a party accustomed to making and breaking coalitions since the 1980s, Arié Dery has been a minister in many governments.  

In 1993, the Supreme Court had already demanded that he be dismissed when he was interior minister, after being indicted for corruption.

In 2000, he was sentenced to three years in prison and released after serving two-thirds of his sentence. 

With AFP 

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